FULL STORY

These are cranky times in Boston. The Red Sox were terrible; the Patriots got knocked out; and Rajon Rondo is gone for a long time.

Now add to the mix this piece in Boston Magazine. Writer Alan Siegel basically torches the folks who normally do the torching. Note: This is one of the unflattering photo-illustrations that ran with the piece.

Siegel writes:

To put it bluntly, “The Lodge”—as Fred Toucher, cohost of the 98.5 The Sports Hub morning radio show, mockingly refers to the city’s clubby, self-important media establishment—is clogged with stale reporters, crotchety columnists, and shameless blowhards. Their canned “hot sports takes” have found a home on local television and talk radio, but do little but suck the fun out of a topic that’s supposed to be just that. And we haven’t even gotten to Dan Shaughnessy yet.

I don’t live in Boston and don’t follow the sports coverage on a daily basis. I know many of the writers from sitting next to them in the press boxes through the years. They are some of the best in the business.

However, Siegal’s piece implies the coverage has become lazy. He cites national media beating Boston beat writers on stories on their beats. It also has become predictable.

Siegel writes:

As forward-thinking as that sounds, the newspaper’s core approach to sports coverage—which still relies on boilerplate game recaps, columns, and weekly “notebooks” offering bullet-point takes on the happenings from the various sports leagues—hasn’t changed much over the years. In fact, not much in the Boston sports media has—not even the photos on the wall.

Siegel concludes:

Were the Globe to stop publishing sports tomorrow, how much loss would readers feel? Certainly some, but much less than even a decade ago. That’s because Boston fans have gotten increasingly used to following the ups and downs of their favorite teams in national outlets rather than local ones.

The message to The Lodge is clear: Change, or die the death of utter irrelevance.